Love finds a way as wedding ring lost to ocean returns

Published: 19 May 2017Image credit: Cairns Post

The chances of finding a piece of jewellery a month after you lose it in the depths of Australia’s spectacular reefs are pretty slim.

However, according to one reef diver. It’s not impossible.

Instead, he believes the ocean will “give back” if you treat it with respect. And that’s exactly what it did.

Mark Meres took a dive with his wife Chiquita in the Norman Reef on April 10 when he lost his beloved wedding ring.

He expected the worst, despite the efforts from everyone else on the boat who had jumped back in the water in search of the sentimental piece of jewellery.

“A lot of people jumped back in and tried to find it but everyone kind of knew it was gone – if you drop a ring in the coral, it’s gone for good,” the couple's diving instructor Evan Guiton, 25, told The Cairns Post.

She explained she had returned to the same spot countless times and had no luck, but then a miracle happened... Ms Guiton spotted something peculiar.

“It was covered in green algae and didn’t even look like a ring, but I pick up anything that doesn’t look like reef,” she said.

“It just hit me that this was the dive site where he lost it. I looked at the ‘soulmates’ inscription on the inside and it was his ring.

“What are the odds, especially that I would be the one to find it?”

Mr Meres told The Cairns Post he couldn’t believe he had been reunited with his ring after more than a month, citing he thought he’d “never see it again”.

“We are both passionate divers and I have dived all over the world and have never taken the ring off or lost it,” he told the publication.